The Ultimate Service Failure: an Investigation of Consumer Responses to Rejection

The current research aims to understand the complexity of consumer reactions to rejection. Three studies were conducted that illustrated the systematically negative reactions of consumers who were rejected by an organization. Study 1 demonstrated that even in the absence of financial consequences, consumers exhibited negative reactions to rejection. Study 2 indicated that if the circumstances of the rejection were fair, the negative response was somewhat mitigated, but the negative effect remained. The final study demonstrated that the negative response to rejection even remains when consumer expectations for admittance into the organization are low.

Citation:

Kelley Main and Laurence Ashworth (2006) ,"The Ultimate Service Failure: an Investigation of Consumer Responses to Rejection", in AP - Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 7, eds. Margaret Craig Lees, Teresa Davis, and Gary Gregory, Sydney, Australia : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 24-25.